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Bill Clinton to me

So my inbox has been filling up with message after message from the Democrats and Republicans.

Oy, I'm so flummoxed.

The favorite message I received was a request for money in GMail's status bar, it said "Bill Clinton to me."

Wow, that's a lot of responsibility. The President is asking me for money.

Here's the thing. I haven't given Senators Clinton or Obama a thin dime. I don't have two of them to rub together (as the old sayings go).

I can't make up my mind. Obama seems more interested in working with both sides of the aisle, while Hillary seems more interested in getting done all of the things that she didn't accomplish as First Lady.

I read "Living History." I liked it very much, but the campaigning in the text was so blatant, I wanted to hit something. Instead of being an honest portrayal of an insider's life at the White House, it read much more like "I'm Hillary Clinton, and I'm running for President."

The other major problem I had with the book was that it was dated. She didn't support or defend her stance on the war, but she spent plenty of time sniping ever so subtly against the Republican establishment.

I'm currently three chapters into "The Audacity of Hope." I am liking it so far, but I'm being very skeptical of all that I read.

I'm leaning very strongly toward Obama, in fact, I've pretty much decided I will press the button for him in the booth. I just hope that he can beat Senator McCain.

My thoughts on the oscars

So, I just finished watching the Oscars(r) through the glorious invention of TiVo.

Some random thoughts:

• TG Juno won something. My sister Kath calls best original screenplay "The grand booby prize" that the Academy gives out when something's really good, but there's still a better "Best Picture" movie. In this case, since an ex-stripper wrote the film, it really is a grand booby prize.
  
• Daniel Day-Lewis can suck it. The whole bowing to Helen Mirren was soooo last year. His "method acting" of taking years to prepare, blah blah is kind of interesting, but really, I'm so tired of his schtick.
• The montages of past year's clips were probably the most charming parts of the evening.
  
• John Stewart's Wii game with the little choir girl was lame. It smacked of product placement.
  
• John Stewart was funnier than the last time, but still not quite funny enough.
  
• Enchanted's songs were really good, but the song from Once was way better. August Rush was kind of pedantic and stale, even with a prodigy songstress.
  
• Jack Nicholson can just never come up on stage again. He seemed totally out of it. He definitely needs some Geritol or something (speaking of product placement).
  
• It's a Class A Felony that Hillary Swank has 2 Oscars and Laura Linney has yet to receive one. LL Cool Lady is an incredibly passionate and versatile actress.
  
• I really want to see La Vie En Rose. I love Edith Piaf's music. I actually have had it on my Nano for over a year.
  
• Paul Thomas Anderson's movies intrigue me. Even though DDL is in it, I may have to see There Will be Blood. What the hell is drinking a milkshake have to do with oil?
  
• The Coen Brothers movies are fascinating. I just saw Big Lebowski a few months ago for the first time. Fargo was amazing and Lebowski was enchantingly strange.
  
• NCFOM is still putting me off because Tommy Lee Jones is in it. The only movie I like that man in is Coal Miner's Daughter. He can suck it with DDL.
  

The Clintonistas

I think that dyed-in-the-wool liberals need to face the fact that Hillary cannot win.

My hope is that she will serve as the VP to help Obama with foreign policy matters, so we will get Obama's progressive, anti-war policy with her foreign policy expertise.

A traitor's treatise

I did it. I bought a Windows laptop instead of a Mac. I am a Mac Traitor, but I am not a Mac hater.

I love Apple computers and their focus on sensible, elegant design, intuitive operating systems, and reliability, but I am not a fan of their market practices.

I have dozens of reasons for getting the PC over the MacBook Pro that I really salivated over, but the main concern was the most obvious: The Dollar Ballot.

I needed a new computer. My Dell Dimension 4550 is what I lovingly refer to as "pre-war." Though I actually bought it in May of 2003, right around the time that the mission was "accomplished," it's very old and very very slow. I've tried every home remedy that I can think of to speed it up, but to no avail. It now is sitting in the other room serving as my admin workstation for my home wireless network.

As I type this, Chad is using his Nintendo DS on WiFi, and I'm in the comfy pleather chair, pounding away on my Toshiba Satellite A215 S6804 laptop.

The original price range of the machine, according to CNet was arount 900. I got a killer special with a mail-in rebate and my final cost will be less than $650. I have 2 GB of memory and 200GB Hard drive with a 1600 MHz bus speed.

To get any similar kind of specification from a Mac, I would have paid four times the price. If you don't believe me, just check the Apple Store online, or walk into your local best buy.



I could have also waited until I had saved some more money, but as a writer, I really needed a machine that could work. I started looking for used. I tried Ebay, I tried all avenues until I finally settled on the Toshiba. There was no better machine out there for the same amount of money. I have firewire, a built-in webcam (iSight be darned), and I can burn dual layer DVDs and laser-encode my own labels.

My next agony will be trying to get rid of Vista, but that's a story for another time.

Michelle Obama on Larry King Live

War on Baseball

I must admit, I'm not much of a baseball enthusiast. I played baseball for an entire summer as a child and I just didn't find the appeal.

That being said, I must say that the current fauxtreversy over "doping" in pro sports, specifically the Mitchell report on baseball has stirred up latent anger in me.

As liberal-progressive as I consider myself to be, I don't understand why we even care about regulating doping in baseball. I would guess that the vast amounts of time and money wasted on all of these investigations and hearings could have been much better utilized by useful social programs like the SCHIP expansion, school lunches, or additional Pell Grants.

Pro sports are an industry, like any other. Corruption, drug use, scandal will always be part of pro sports. The problem is that the drugs got too sophisticated to be detected and now they're supposedly out of control.

The real issue is that the government is trying once again to legislate morality.

The tragic coincidence is that pro sports and the spectator culture often lead to much more immoral behavior like binge drinking, gambling, and other unappealing activities.

Taking the corruption out of pro sports is like trying to catch smoke with a butterfly net. They'll never get any of it.

It's time for Congress to move on.

Torchwood - Friends Style

This is the most hysterical parody of Friends I have ever seen.

Why the Venture Brothers totally rules

I found this great interview with Jackson Publick online.

This is probably the best written cartoon ever. If you've never seen it, you must check it out.

Iraq and a Hard Place

The Iraq War is such a touchy subject. I supported the decision to go to War because I believed that there were WMDs in Iraq. Obviously, that was at best an error in judgment by the administration, or at worst a fabrication of the administration's clandestine influences.

The hard choice is that now it's time to pick a totally new administration. As I speak Romney has thankfully pulled out of the race. But that leaves us with a slightly more congealed Republican party versus a stylistically divided Democratic Party.

I just read Margaret Cho's blurb on Huffington Post.

Her levity made me smile, but it truly minimizes the dramatic social impact that this election will have.

I would be happy with either Senator Clinton or Obama winning. If the winner of the convention doesn't name the other as running mate, they will definitely lose the election because the democratic party will be in shambles.

I admire Senator McCain because I believe he puts the interests of the nation before the interests of the Republican base. That being said, he lately seems to be bending over backward to please everyone, and that worries me that he will wind up in some unholy alliance with whoever the next Karl Rove is in the party.

Another interesting note: Frank Schaeffer, one of the biggest names in the Pro-life movement is proud to support Obama for his life-affirming stance on issues, even though Obama is admittedly pro-choice. His argument for Obama is lucid and logical, something that one may not expect from the fire and brimstone rhetoric of a religious writer.

I will vote in the primary, I'm just stuck as to whom I will choose. I'm glad I still have a couple of months to make up my mind.

Picture me as a writer

So, yes I've been neglecting the blog lately. Sorry to you loyal readers. I literally have no excuse since there's no school to occupy my time.

I have been very busy at work. Basically, we're doing a new website and I'm the primary person in charge of writing all of the content. Yikes.

On the freelance side, I did attend the Hoosier State Press Association job fair last weekend in Muncie. It gave me a lot to think about, but very little hope for landing a job at a daily newspaper. It wasn't without hope however, as I was able to get face time and schmoozing in with some editors. I also met a lot of cool students. It was worth the drive to Muncie.

Also, my latest feature came out today in the News-Sentinel. Here's the direct link, or you can link to it from my other blog, stboyernews.blogspot.com.